Magnetometers are used for sensing magnetic fields. Applications include geophysical surveying, nuclear magnetic resonance (magnetic resonance imaging), magneto-cardiography, magneto-encephalography and perimeter surveillance. Gyroscopes sense rotation. These instruments are used in inertial navigation and platform stabilization (anti-roll systems in cars, for example). The implementations described here allow for high sensitivity and simultaneously inexpensive fabrication, small size and low power consumption. These implementations would be suitable for remote deployment that requires extended operation under battery power and integration into handheld, portable systems.
Considerable prior art has been focused on gyroscopes based on polarization of the alkali and noble gas atoms through optical pumping and spin-exchange collisions, which was initially developed in the 1960s and refined considerably throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The work was largely abandoned in the early 1980s with the invention of the ring laser gyroscope and fiber-optic gyroscope, which promised equivalent sensitivity with reduced complexity. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) gyroscope due to the miniaturization possibilities allowed by micro machined alkali atom vapor cells.
There are various types of commercial magnetometers, each with its own application area. These are summarized in Table 1 below (Table 1 is only provided for exemplary purposes and is not meant to limit the scope for the invention):
TABLE 1Comparison of commercial magnetometers.SizePowerTypeSensitivity (nT)(cm3)(mW)Cost ($)CommentsSQUID 10−5 105(*)~1000 104CryogenicCoil 0.000110010100AC onlyCesium 0.00110020,000 104ScalarFlux gate 0.0110050100MagneticMagneto- 1 0.0010.01 10High bwresistiveHall100 1100 10Very reliableExpected performance metrics of the diverging beam magnetometer:CSAM 10−5 150100Scalar(*)Including cryostat
For many years, magnetometers based on superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDS) had unsurpassed sensitivities in the range of 1-10 fT/√Hz. These instruments require cryogenic cooling and therefore are large, expensive and difficult to operate. Recently, atomic magnetometers similar to the invention described in this disclosure but larger and without the diverging beam geometry, were shown to achieve a sensitivity of below 1 fT/√Hz. Commercial atomic magnetometers based on Cs are approximately a few 100 cm3 in volume, run on 20 W of electrical power and achieve sensitivities in the range of 1 pT/√Hz. The cost of Cs magnetometers is higher than all but SQUID-based sensors. Proton magnetometers, another type of atomic magnetic sensor, are less expensive than Cs magnetometers and are also more accurate, but suffer from considerably worse sensitivity, ˜1 nT/√Hz.
Search coil magnetic sensors can achieve sub-pT sensitivities at high frequencies (>1 MHz) but are largely insensitive to DC magnetic fields. Search coils have been used for many years as the sensors in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) instruments. Flux gate magnetometers typically achieve sensitivities in the range of 1-10 pT/√Hz and are fairly small (a few cm3) but require considerable power (˜1 W). They are also magnetic, which makes them difficult to use in arrays. Commercial magneto-resistive sensors are sensitive to ˜1 nT/√Hz but are very small (4 mm3, packaged), and very inexpensive. Finally, Hall probe magnetometers have very poor sensitivity (100 nT/√Hz) but are inexpensive.
An important distinction between atomic magnetometers and most other sensor types is that atomic magnetometers are scalar sensors, which means they sense the magnitude of the magnetic field, rather than the projection along one spatial direction. This is particularly important for applications on moving platforms since platform motion adds considerable noise to a vector sensor as the angle between the field and the sensor axis changes.
One very high performance commercial gyroscope is the hemispherical resonator gyroscope (HRG), which achieves an exceptional angle-random walk (ARW) and bias drift but is very expensive to manufacture. Ring laser gyros (RLGs) and fiber-optics gyros (FOGs) also achieve navigation-grade performance at somewhat reduced cost. MEMS gyroscopes generally have very poor bias stability.
It is therefore believed that a solution to such drawbacks lies in the development of a magnetic field sensing apparatus, such as a gyroscope, and method as presented in this application.